Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The youthful and pious Thomas Peyton
published two books of his intended verse paraphrase of Genesis, The Glasse
of Time, in 1620. Peyton was not a very inventive narrator of the sparse
story given in Genesis (he got as far as Noah), while as a versifier, it is
easy to suspect he was pushing on too quickly, often filling out his lines to
meet obvious rhyme words, achieving no sustained style. But his reflections on
other people’s reflections on what might have happened to Adam and Eve must
have catered to a taste not even the scale of Du Bartas’s Divine Week
could satisfy, and his work was reprinted in 1623 and 1625. One can imagine the
young Milton looking at it for maybe five minutes, at least until he read
something like this suggestion of the devil lying in wait to accost Eve alone… watchingTime,whenAdamstept aside,Even but a little from his lovely Bride,To pluck perhaps a Nut upon the Trees,Or get a combe amongst the honey Bees…

(as stepping aside ‘to pluck a rose’
was a euphemism of the time, this was doubly inept).

Peyton hoped that “my speech as
generall to all, /May like a
Sermon in the Pulpit fall: /And
not to wade in curious questions deepe…” - that he would be instructive and not
over-curious. “In God’s book we love to pry and peeke’, he wrote, deploringly,
while doing exactly that himself. But he was unable to inhabit mentally, and so
fill out the life of Adam and Eve in Eden and afterwards; instead he is drawn
into rabbinical lore and all the other speculations about their lives after the
Fall, as well as such matters as the location of Paradise, or what the
forbidden fruit actually was.

His own multiple retelling of
possible events after the Fall follows a distraught Adam after his expulsion
all the way east (Adam’s quest is to reconnect with the divine light) to the
final insurmountable barrier of the River Ganges, where Adam (“some say”)
circumcised himself, and then stood in the river until he was “overgrown with
green”. Then Peyton withdraws all this agreeably zany rabbinical legend with a
comment that it’s unlikely Adam was so long separated from his wife, or even be
able to bear to be so far away from Paradise itself, but have stayed close to her
and their former dwelling place.

which Peyton says is surrounded by a freshwater lake eighteen miles
across and four foot deep, ‘distilled’ from the tears of the penitent Adam and
Eve (we can be generous and imagine that distilling their tears would make the
lake freshwater), while a ‘flaming hill’ nearby symbolized the flaming sword
guarding paradise (Ceylon does not have volcanic activity).

Describing Ceylon and its climate makes Peyton as paradisal in
description of a place as he ever gets – but his account then moves on to Mount
Amara in Ethiopia, and finally to Assyria ‘the likeliest place indeede’, and
also equipped with a ‘smoky hill’ to memorialize the sword guarding the Tree of
Life. On the great mystery of the nature of that carefully guarded ‘Tree of
Life’ Peyton offers a suggestion that the tree was probably not yet ripe: for it
was a symbol of the Christ to come.

These long sections of his poem
where he canvasses various possibilities are only remarkable as illustrations
of that characteristic mix of Bible history and world travel they went in for
in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. When it comes to the Forbidden Fruit,
Peyton learnedly opts, in the end, for the banana, which has to his mind the
right combination of taste, scent and multiple cropping, and has a built-in ‘signature’
which shows its nature:

more
like and probable it is:If that their iudgements do not erre amis,The dainty tree that in their country growes,And twice a yeare his pleasant fruite that
showes,Yeelding a fragrant and a lovely scent,If but the same be either crusht or rent:A Cucumber much like it is in shew,Of pleasing taste, and sweet delightfull hew.If with a knife the fruite in two you reave,A perfect crosse you shall therein perceave:The spatious leaves are full a fadome long·In breadth three spans…

It is rather a pity that no artist
ever adopted this identification – an Eve by Titian or Rubens tempting Adam with
a banana would have been glorious.

But what gives Peyton some
individual interest is his gradual superimposition of his own story onto his
retelling of Genesis. Evil came into the enclosed and ideal world he shared
with his beloved Urania (meaning, of course, the muse of Christian poetry he
shared with Du Bartas). Peyton, identifying himself strongly with innocence and
true faith, inserts his account of what envious folk did to him, into the main
narrative of the Fall under Lucifer’s envious assault.

It is not certain that Peyton would
have seen any incongruity in this, had it been pointed out to him, rather, it
is all one (as far as he’s concerned), and his own life experience validates
the Bible truths. Peyton is not in the least abashed about his faith, which is
of the right kind, as is his art: God sends Urania down to him on a mission up
there in importance to Peyton with the ministry of Christ:

Whatever it was happened to Peyton,
it was clearly something he felt very aggrieved about, but it is never made entirely
clear what it actually was. A self-righteous and touchy man (I infer), it may
have been the case that adverse comment on his opinions, which he considered to
distort them, prompted him to sound off about Envy, whose venom which has
besmirched even his beloved Urania:

Urania(deere) thy very case is mine,How did myFoesstill to this day combine,Backe slidingfriends(much like toslipperyEels)Haveundermin’d,to turne up both mine heeles:Withfawningtearmes my company have sought,Invertedthat (which yet) I never thought;Reportedwords,the which were never spake…

Nothing about The Glasse of Time itself strikes me
as heterodox. When he invents, he tends to do so under the influence of
Spenser, in highly descriptive allegory. We hear a lot about the daughters of
God, the allegorical figures of Mercy, Justice, Charity and Truth. Here, God
just sounds indecisive when faced by female tears (of course, the compassion is
His own, talked out of Him by His justice):

But God himselfe his daughter deare
that sees,With weeping eyes before his face to crave,That but onEvehe would compassion have:Began to stay his minde, to alter cleane,And to the woman now began to leane:But that hard by stood Justice in the place,And urg’d him much to prosecute the case:When all the reason Mercy well could render,Was that her selfe was of the female gender …

And this following passage is not
well handled, in which a fit of papal petulance about a lost peacock (Peyton repeatedly
denounces both Catholics and ‘Puritants’) unluckily collides with God’s
reaction to the disappearance of the Forbidden apple (wasn’t it a banana?):

What may we thinke of that
ambitious Pope,Which dar’d to scoffe under heauens glorious
Cope,Against that God, that in his sacred frowneTurns up his heeles, and hurles his pride soone
downe?When having mist a simple childish toy,A Peacocke bird which seem’d his onely joy.Distempered much began in heate to chide,That few men could his holy presence bide.And afterward asham’d of what was past,To shew his choller not long time did last;Excusde himselfe, that he
might angry be,As well for that, as was the Trinitie.When discontented for an Apple lost,Both Eve and Adam to their paine and cost,From Paradise were thrust quite out and beaten,And much disgrac’t for one poore Apple eaten …

Peyton’s major problem was most
likely vexatious litigation, causing him great losses to his estate, and spells
in prison (I assume that people he had thought his friends, turned legal
opponents, had paid for him to be arrested).

Nay thou thy selfe, nobleUraniadeere,Since first thy landing and arrival heere,Hast thou not beene on every side turmoyl’d,Tost too and fro, byEnvyovertoyl’d?Whose viprous tongue within asacredplace,Hath belcht hervenome,aim’d at thy disgrace;Like to the Divell inParadiseat first,That banefullpoysonin hisBresthath nurst,To wrong thy person, weaken much thystate,Enrichhimselfe to satisfie his hate,Tooke all
advantage working on thyyouth,Suggestedliesinstead of nakedtruth:Lock’t thee up close (Immur’d) within a Wall,When not a Groate was due to him at all;But by the order of this nobleLand,Hein thatplacefordebtto-thee should stand.

But holy God, what will become of
those,Which in an open publike place shall chose,To giveoccasionfirst to shew their gall,Do call a man both this and that and all,And afterwards shall lye upon the catch,Their friends estate, into their hands to
snatch,ByDeedes,
Conveyance, Obligations, Bonds,Towringandwrest,to make them sell their Lands,Before such time as any thing is due,To clap up such withCerberushis crue,In wofull prison sick to lye and rot …

Complaints about how he had been
treated continue, and with him, his Muse suffers

… all the spight against me she [Envy] can use,May waste myState,and hinder thee myMuse.

…
by
her I am misused,Hurried about by slandrous tongues abused,Kept long fromhome,unto my great expence,Weakened my Lands and living ever since,On all sides crost (byGreatnesse) over sway’d,

… So deerestMusehere in this mortall life,That swarmes in troupes of those delight in
strife,Which never rest till all my state be spent,But at myRuineall their aime is bent,

The importance to Peyton of money,
and hanging on to the wealth you have, impinges on his Paradise narrative. His
Garden of Eden is surprisingly opulent; Adam has wealth just lying about. Then
of course he loses it all, and hangs about in the vicinity, hoping to get it
back:

.. all the world thou hadst in ample
store,Plenty of wealth and gold at thy command,And all the creatures in the earth to stand,Before thy face subjected to thy will,And thou the Lord of Paradise yet still.

… How is thy ground exceeding rich and faire·A region seasoned with a temperate aire,Thy channels crawling full of golden Ore …

One might think the excluded Adam
could pick wealth enough off the outside walls of this opulent Paradise:

The lofty walls were all of Jasper
built,Lin’d thick with gold, and covered rich with giltLike a quadrangle seated on a hill,With twelve brave gates the curious eye to fill,The sacred luster as the glistring Zone,And every gate fram’d of a severall stone…

I deduce that Peyton got married
too. He makes some passing remarks about having, regrettably, less time for
Urania than he’d wish: “And what ifHymensomething doe annoy/ Thy tenderFruit,yet shalt thou live in joy…”

One of his favourite motifs as he
deals with the Bible patriarchs is to praise their continence of life until
marriage at mature years, marriage contracted out of a spirit of duty to the
church rather than any youthful lust.

Though I can’t quite see exactly how
it connects to his legal problems, Peyton seems to have got into a quarrel
about Eve, perhaps with a clergyman who then litigated with a mind to “Enrichhimselfe to satisfie his hate”.

Prior to the Fall, Eve is (conventionally
enough), for Adam a “Glittring sugred hooke, / She drawes thy love to mind her
speeches more,/ Then
God himselfe that gave thee her in store.” Peyton
does not attempt to describe her, he actually pays more attention to the beauty
of Adam:

As the two lights within the
Firmament,So hath thy God his glory to thee lent,Compoz’d thy body exquisite and rare,That all his works cannot to thee compare,Like his owne Image, drawne thy shape divine,With curious Pencill shadowed forth thy line:Within thy Nosthrils blowne his holy breath,Impal’d thy head with that inspiring wreath,Which binds thy front, and elevates thine eyes …

I suppose Peyton imagines Adam with
a kind of Bacchic wreath. But the second book includes a sudden upsurge of
sympathetic interest in Eve. As Peyton tells it, Adam (after the Fall), quite
ignorant of what he is doing, has sex with his wife:

upon
a time it fell,ThecircumstanceI must forbeare to tell,Playing with
Eve within that shady bowre,And in his armes his loveliest sweetest flowre,Embracing, toying, smiling, kissing sweete,The sports most chaste unto aSpousebed meete,Thinking the time he had with her beguil’d,Forgets himselfe, and she conceives with child.

Peyton is fond of projecting innocence onto Adam – alone in Paradise prior to
the creation of Eve, in one of the many similes Peyton proudly points out to us
in his margins, he’s like a school boy, peeking in every bush for birds’ nests.
Adam’s eyes do not seem very much opened by having tasted the Fruit of
Knowledge. After this inadvertent coupling, Adam is baffled by Eve’s behaviour – she keeps eating bizarre things, and
demanding that Adam find a way back into Paradise and get her the stuff she
really has a fancy for:

Strange is
the change she in her selfe doth find,An extreme Passion working in her mind,Longing oft times somesopsin Tarre to lick,Her bodies altred, and her stomack sick,Black uglyBerries,fulsome unripePlums,And every thing that in her way next comes,The goodly fruits which are within the walls,OfParadise,she to her husband calls,Desires, intreates him, as he loves hisWife,Forth with to hast, and fetch to save her life.But this
erratic and conventionally anti-feministic Eve, cursed by God after the
disobedience with ‘Sick loathsome vomits’ in pregnancy, suddenly starts to
receive what seems to be Peyton’s sincere tribute. When Adam returns from one
of his excursions for Twiglets, he finds that she has given birth in his absence,
and Eve explains to Adam:

She knew not well how first to her
it came,But that she thought although hersencewas weake,This was theSeedtheSerpents
head should breake,Told him in words and gentle speeches mild,That by the Lord she had conceiv’d that
Child.

Peyton
underlines his point, insisting that Eve would not have known where her baby
had come about, and that her deduction was pious and correct. He suddenly
breaks out in anger:

As far as this is coherent, it indicates a fierce dispute
about Genesis 4, 1 (“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare
Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from theLord”), in
which Peyton took the text at face value, and someone else, a clergyman, asserted
that Eve was telling a profane lie (with the possibility that this other person
asserted the common enough notion that the real father of Cain was the devil).

For Peyton, however, such opinions
are another assault upon well-meaning inexperience: it’s what happened at the Fall,
it is what happened when he was ensnared by litigants. The plain words of a
pure mind, such as his, or Eve’s, get ‘inverted’ or ‘wrested’ into something
scandalous to the person that uttered them. He continues with a vision of Eve
in heaven:

while her detractors (like his, for
so we can extrapolate)

“headlong downe to damned divels
shall reele:WhilstEveshall sit triumphant on the skies,Viewing their fall, hearing their moanes and
cryes,Joying to see the sacredTruthprevaile,Her meaning clear’d, her foes to weepe and
waile.

Eve goes on to have “about some
threescore more/ Of sons
and daughters”. For Peyton, Cain’s story is just another example of the
poisonous nature of Envy, a man who set out well, but was then polluted (Peyton
makes a parallel with Faustus).

I’m sorry to say that Peyton opts
completely for the mark of Cain as being black skin:

ThatCainsmost fearefull punishment and marke,For raking up his brother in the darkeWas that his skin was all toblackensseturn’d,Like to aCoalewithin
the fire halfe burn’d.

He scoffs at the notion that dark
skin is something to do with climate:

If this be true, how is it that there beeInAfrica,
America,to seeUnder thelineboth people white and faire,As many men that now inEuropeare …(?)

Here’s early modern racism in a couplet:

I will end with Peyton at his most paranoid. In this
personal anecdote, even as he is working with Urania on this divine poem of his
(it’s a wonder he didn’t get it printed in white ink), his enemies gather
outside, just as happened to Lot in Sodom. But his good friend God (that would
be the white one) sends him a dream that makes him wake up, secure his doors,
and escape:

(Ah dearest God) even
whilst myMusewas workingUpon thisPlace,how were my foes all lurkingAbout my house, to undermine my state,With secret traines, close to my dores and gate.But thou didst wake when I was fast asleepe,To make me know that thou dost alwayes keepe,Thysheepefrom danger of aWolfemost fierce,Which in my bloud (next to my state) would
pierceThen didst thou give me at that instant howre,AVisionstrange to shew thy secret powre,That in a dreame when once my body wak’t,My inward thoughts and all my sences shak’t;ButReasonguides and swayes me downe her
streame,To make me prize it 'bove an usuall dreame.Whereat I went, lockt up my dores most sure,To keepe me safe from treacherous pawes impure,Which never yet in all my life was done,The hatefull lawes of cruell foes to shun;But (Heavenly God) when least I knew of harme,How did they then about my house all swarmeOn every side, with raving speeches hot,LikeSodomitsabout the walls ofLot,Till thou protectedst broughtst me safely out,From the curst fury of that griping Rout;Stroke them with blindnesse all like Tygers lay;While thou conveydst my body sure away,To sound thy prayse, and blaze thy glorious
name,To end (this worke) to thy renowned fame.

My illustrations are from the book: the title page ‘vinnet’, as he calls it
(‘vignette’), with Time leading forth Truth, Noah’s Ark, either Paradise or the
heavenly Jerusalem, pious scenes, and himself. Then we have bowlers sinfully
bowling on the Sabbath when others are in church (Peyton has much to say about
this, and how God has punished even Geneva, which allowed shooting on Sundays,
by bringing war to it), a temptation scene with Time and his glass rather oddly
intruded, and the death of Adam and Eve, four of Seth’s sons bearing them away.